What Are Hate Crime?

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CRM 2350 Essay topic: What are hate crimes? Discuss this question in reference to all of the following: gender, race, disability, age. This document intends to examine and attempt to understand what hate crime is, and to discuss them with reference to the specific issues of disability, age, race, and gender. In order to understand the label of ‘hate crime’, it is necessary to examine the categories of people who are considered to be victims of hate crimes. This essay will show that whilst the law often has a broad meaning, in the UK for example, “Any hate incident, which constitutes a criminal offence, perceived by the victim or any other person, as being motivated by prejudice or hate” (Stonewall, 2012), being able to identify and punish hate crimes is far more difficult that it would seem. Whilst there has been a significant rise in the number of hate crimes being reported, the actual definition and clarification of the categories of groups included as possible victims of hate crime remains unclear and as a result, application of the law lacks parity across these groups. Johnson (2010) wrote that over 50,000 hate crimes had been reported in the UK in the preceding year, with over 43,000 reported as racially motivated and almost 5,000 incidents motivated by a person’s sexual orientation, either gay, straight or bisexual. When considering groups who would be most vulnerable to hate crime, race and sexual orientation are likely to spring to mind, although as Gerstenfeld (2010, p.2) points out, precise groups that are included as victims in definitions of ‘hate crimes’ can vary from place to place but race and religion always seem to feature – the two oldest reasons for division in society. Gerstenfeld (2010, p.9) goes on to point out that the simplest definition of a ‘hate crime’ is that it is a criminal act that is

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